The present invention relates to semiconductor devices and, more specifically, to improved representation of thermal coupling in semiconductor circuit design.
During operation, semiconductor devices may experience self-heating since a given device will produce heat as it dissipates power. Self-heating may result in thermal coupling when sufficient heat is produced to affect the operation of surrounding devices. For example, the gain of a device in a design structure or circuit may be decreased as a result of heating caused by the operation of other devices of the design structure or circuit. Unmodeled thermal interaction effects may result in unpredicted behavior of semiconductor devices and circuits, as well as shorter-than-expected component life and/or other undesirable effects.
To reduce or avoid negative effects of thermal coupling, such effects may be taken into account during the design process, particularly for high performance and high power applications. As the current density capability of components or devices of a semiconductor device or design structure increases, thermal coupling may become more pronounced, and predicting thermal coupling effects may figure more prominently in efficient and cost-effective placement of the components or devices in a design structure or circuit. To incorporate the representation of thermal coupling into the design process, however, a separate step is typically performed that may include adding discrete thermal coupling networks to design structure schematics, often manually.